Elections Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

It is nice, while welcoming that I follow the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, to disagree with everything he has said, including that he hopes the noble Lord, Lord Moore, who he so enjoyed, will speak more. As a historian, although I have to say not of his eminence, I am slightly worried that, if the noble Lord speaks many more times, we will not get more books out of him. I ask that he keeps a balance, because we like his writings as well.

Much has been made of what I think are the completely unnecessary and indeed harmful mandatory requirements for ID at polling stations. Worse, as we have heard, is that this stands alongside the ability of expats, perhaps out of this country for 20 or 30 years, to vote by post with absolutely no check that they are alive or that they ever lived, worked or went to school here, or anything else. We will not even check that they are not in prison at the time; our own citizens who live here and are in prison are not given the vote, but these people will be. We are talking of people who do not live here or pay their taxes here—this really is representation without taxation. They do not depend on our schools, our health services, our roads, our police, our universities or anything that our taxes and our Government are responsible for but over which they would now be given a vote—even those, as we have heard, who may have no intention of returning here at any time.

It is true that other nations sometimes permit their nationals to vote, but they usually get them to do so at the embassy here; we have often seen them at election time turning up to vote. In fact, to retain your vote in America, you also have to be liable for American tax. So what we are doing is quite exceptional. We are offering those people a vote with no checks, and not even requiring them to do jury service, at a time when 16 and 17 year-olds, whose whole future is in the hands of the Government, still get no vote in elections.

Worse still, these expats will become permitted donors—that is, they can give virtually unlimited amounts of money, with no checks on its provenance, to UK political parties, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord Grocott have spoken about. I wonder which political party might be the beneficiary of some fairly opaque offshore money from long-exiled Britons—answers on a postcard, please. We should be reducing, not increasing, overseas donations to our political parties. These sorts of donations, even if declared, will tell us nothing about the people involved, who will have contributed nothing to our civic political life or paid any taxes if they are such long-term non-residents.

So why does the Tory party want to add them to the electoral roll? I will wager that it is not for their votes but for their donations. Indeed, despite my putting down a number of Questions, the Government have been unable to tell me how many of those expats currently able to vote have done so—and if the Government do not know, they probably do not care. It is getting some long-term non-residents into the permitted-donor category that is behind this move. The noble Lord, Lord True, is an honourable man, so if I am wrong and this really is in order to allow our wonderful Labour member in Rome, Harry Shindler—who the Government normally cite every time we talk about this—to vote, the Government will accept the amendment to restrict donations to people who are both on the electoral roll and resident in this country. If the Government refuse to accept the amendment, we will know it is all about enabling wealthy non-residents to fund a British political party. Indeed, at Prime Minister’s Questions today, the Prime Minister reasserted that money would be taken only from those on the electoral register—which is why he is extending enormously the number of expats who can now go on to the register.

We have been reading a lot about how the Conservatives like taking rather large bundles of dosh from money that has originated abroad. The wife of a former Putin finance Minister apparently paid £160,000 for a game of tennis with Boris Johnson. I gather that she is the most generous ever female donor to a political party—and I thought women had good political sense. We know there are many such examples of money from somewhat dubious sources finding its way into, I am afraid, the Conservatives’ coffers. While the Bill is about UK nationals, who is to say that those living abroad may not assist in facilitating such generosity, given the absolute lack of checks? It will be impossible to be sure that they ever lived here, because we do not have records going back over 30 years and no system is being set up to undertake such due diligence. So we risk disenfranchising some people with ID checks while giving the vote to people who do not live here, pay taxes here or have any ambition to return here.

This Bill is not good for democracy. I do not think it is good for the Conservative Party either, because if it gets more donations this way, it will become public, and that will not be in its interests.

House of Lords: Appointments

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think the Greens are very capable of making their voice heard in your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has twice referred to the number of defeats. There is no point in having a second Chamber if we always agree with the first Chamber. The whole point is that we have different views here. We ask the other House to think again. But sort of threatening the numbers because we defeat something that the Government have done and ask them to think again is surely not the right way to consider the role of this House.

EU–UK Partnership Council

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what is the agenda for the next meeting of the EU–UK Partnership Council, and when that meeting will take place.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)]

My Lords, we have not yet agreed a date for the next meeting of the Partnership Council. The trade and co-operation agreement requires the council to meet once a year, unless otherwise agreed by the co-chairs. This condition has been met with the Partnership Council’s meeting on 9 June to begin the process of implementing the TCA’s governance structures. All TCA specialised committees are now scheduled to meet before the end of this year.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

As someone who may be nominated to be on the PPA overseeing the Partnership Council, I hope it will meet a little more frequently and with a little more content. The TCA included a declaration on the UK’s participation in EU programmes such as Horizon; it was agreed in principle but there was no time to finalise it before the agreement was signed. The issue was to go to the appropriate specialised committee for action “at the earliest opportunity”. A year on, nothing has happened on Horizon. Can the Minister ensure, even if the Partnership Council is not meeting, that the other committees he mentioned meet and get on with this so that we can participate in Horizon, which is so important for all our researchers?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the thrust of the question of the noble Baroness. I think it is well known that we have wanted to get the Horizon arrangements up and running for some time; it is a matter of great disappointment that we have still not managed to do so. It is not 100% clear why, but that is the situation. However, the good news is that we have now agreed that there will be a meeting of the relevant specialised committee before the end of this year, provisionally on 21 December. I hope that might mark a change in the approach being taken and enable us to move this forward.

Ministerial Code

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, high standards in public life are of fundamental importance. I respectfully submit, regularly from this Dispatch Box, that we are fortunate in this country in the high standards we have in public life. Of course this Government look carefully at reports and advice given on various aspects. As the noble Lord will know, we are carefully considering a number of recently published reports and will respond in due course.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Would it be a good idea if Ministers obeyed the law, rather than seeking to overturn it either in judicial review or by a court should they be found to have flaunted it?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am not certain what specifically the noble Baroness is referring to. This Government respect the judgment of the courts and that is a principle of our polity, but any Government are entitled to review the existing law and submit to Parliament proposals for changing it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, for a fourth time it is my pleasure to give a very warm welcome to my noble friend’s attempt—successfully this time, I hope—to get this measure through Parliament.

The last time I spoke in your Lordships’ House on an earlier version was in March last year. Before that, it was in March 2019 and on a Bill that had had its Second Reading 18 months earlier, in September 2017. As I said early last year, that was quite some foot-dragging, and still we make no progress while, as we have heard, the by-elections roll merrily along, bringing—this is the serious bit—this House and democracy into disrepute. This is all at a time when, rather than bringing in more white, male hereditary Peers, we need to reduce the size of the House and increase its diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity and background.

It is bad enough that we outnumber the democratically elected House next door, but to do so with 90 of our Members being here by virtue of their grandfathers, their great-grandfathers or, sometimes, their great-great-grandfathers is a source of shame to a 21st-century legislature. To those women who have approached some of us during our preparations for this debate and who, unbelievably, want to entrench inherited privilege further by adding an extra cohort of white hereditary people to this House—the daughters of hereditary Peers—I say this: that is no way to tackle gender inequality.

What they are asking is for a group of women who have not managed to be appointed here through their own skill, achievements or talents to become legislators in this great Parliament. They want women who have not managed to be appointed here on their own record to have the right to come here on the deeds not even of their grandmothers but of their grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers. It is hard to imagine what these people are thinking. This is not feminism, and it is nothing to do with equality. If those women object to male offspring being able to be catapulted into this House, surely they should join my noble friend Lord Grocott in his campaign to end the by-elections for male offspring. Of course I want to see more women in here, but on their own merit—that is, on where they have contributed to our society in public, political, artistic, medical, academic, charity or creative life. I want women here for what they have done, not for what their great-grandfathers did.

To those who support women inheriting seats here, I say this: if they have any interest in fairness, equality or democracy, how do they think this would look to ethnic-minority communities and others excluded from this VIP fast track? Indeed, I ask them, as I ask the men who support continuation: at a time when Black Lives Matter has made such a difference around the world to our thinking about representation in our communities, what does it look like that we continue with something that excludes a large part of society? Do they wonder what the press would make of some of their predecessors? In this period, when we look back at the creation of wealth in this country, we know that some of it was borne on practices that we would now, through today’s lens, look at with abhorrence. Some of those people are exactly the ones who were, in their time, ennobled and brought to this House. Today, I think that the press will look very closely at anyone coming in like that and the original awards with some embarrassment.

It is always the same band playing. Have noble Lords noticed how many of us are here again? I see my noble friends Lord Snape and Lord Anderson, as well as other noble Lords who often speak on this issue. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord True, is frequently, though not always, here. Back in 2017, he was honest enough to admit that some of the resistance to change had been to further the Conservative interest. The figures bear that out, with 10 times as many Conservative than Labour Peers embroiled in this insular scheme. To the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, whose grandfather is of course still held in great regard, particularly on this side of the House, I say this: I doubt that his grandfather, when he accepted the title, expected to see his grandson sit as a Tory Minister as a result of it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

Perhaps Mr Tony Blair should have invited me when he was leader of the Opposition. He is so charming, he could have convinced me to join the noble Baroness’s Benches. Who knows what the outcome would have been?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

We will try again.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

Just between us two, when they do not hear, the offer is still there.

The one advantage—the only one, I think—of the Government having a majority of 80 in the other place is that it now has the chance to grasp the nettle, safe in the knowledge that its working majority down there will not be threatened by any pesky Lords.

This modest measure would make change very gradually. We are not seeking to say farewell to any hereditary already here; indeed, we look forward to their contributions for many more years. However, the credibility of their work and of this House is undermined by how membership can still be achieved through by-elections, producing a self-perpetuating selection of new Members chosen by a tiny electorate. Let us get rid of this silly nonsense and waste no more time on it.

Ministerial Code

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I would never characterise Her Majesty’s Opposition as wolves, but my noble friend makes a point of great importance. We should all reflect that the overwhelming character of British government and public life is not corrupt but driven by a sense of public duty that goes right to the top of this Government.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I feel for the Minister. I know him—indeed, I think the whole House knows him—to be a particularly honourable Member, and we value everything that he has done here. However, I have to ask him whether he is at all ashamed of some of his colleagues in the other place.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I do not comment on the other place, but I refer noble Lords to the observations made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the outset of the debate in the other place yesterday.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Effect of Renegotiation on Other Trade Negotiations

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what assessment Her Majesty’s Government have made of the diplomatic consequences for (1) current, and (2) future, trade negotiations, of their decision to seek to renegotiate the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are implementing a successful programme of trade negotiations around the world. Agreement in principle was announced with New Zealand overnight, and we have already reached agreement in principle with Australia. In both cases, these are hugely beneficial free trade agreements to both parties. We do not believe that our efforts to resolve the difficulties arising from the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland will have any diplomatic consequences for our FTA negotiations programme.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

That really sounds like wishful thinking. We have heard about New Zealand, and indeed I think the noble Lord was in his place at the time. We have applied to the CPTPP and we have the Australia deal. Can he really think that his willingness to tear up an agreement that he negotiated and the Prime Minister signed—in good faith, we assume—just two years ago will help the work of his fellow Ministers as they negotiate delicate deals with other countries around the world regarding the likelihood that we will hold to any agreement that we sign?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, no one is speaking of tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol. We have made very clear that our wish is to negotiate a new version of the protocol with a new balance, and to do so consensually. That is not unusual in international relations, and there are plenty of examples that one could give. On the FTA question, look at the facts: we negotiated 60-plus free trade agreements last year before withdrawal; we have a huge programme of negotiations going on; and I am sure that they will come to good and beneficial results.

Imports from EU to GB: Business Preparation

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I think our position on the protocol is well known, and we may come to it later. Of course, my noble friend is absolutely right to say that it makes sense for us to put in place the controls that are right for us. Of course, there are controls—customs controls came in on 1 January—but we do not have to replicate everything that the European Union does. We intend to have a world-class border by 2025, with proportionate checks based on risk. That is the right way to proceed.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, yesterday, my noble friend Lord Adonis shared with us a six year-old photograph of a very slimline David Frost saying that the whisky industry needed the “fewest possible barriers” in order to sell into European markets. That is what business still wants, but the Government do not seem to listen, despite the fact that surely they must be involved in the design of the procedures and not just told at the end, “This is what you must implement”. Next week, almost a year after the trade agreement was signed, the Minister’s consultation on engagement with business closes. Can he assure the House that he will respond rapidly to that and put in place a robust system of consultation with business, unions and consumers?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. She is of course correct that our consultation on involving industry and civil society more generally in the implementation of the trade and co-operation agreement closes shortly. We will of course respond soon: we need to get these bodies up and running before the end of the year, and it is absolutely our intention to do so. As a general principle, it is right that the fewest possible controls are always best—that is clear. Of course, we are not always in control of the controls that the European Union puts in place. We believe that the benefits of being outside the customs union and in control of our own trade policy very much outweigh any disadvantages.

Government Departments: Non-Executive Directors

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the code of practice which I referred to sets out at point 3.3:

“The board should be balanced, with approximately equal numbers of ministers, senior officials and non-executive board members.”


The Home Office has eight Ministers and has appointed eight NEDs. MHCLG has five Ministers; it currently has six. There is an effort to ensure that there is a broad balance.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If NEDs, ethical advisers and heads of Ofcom and quangos look like political donors, look like political colleagues and look like friends of the Prime Minister or other Ministers, they probably are. So is it not time that the Government either admitted this and said that they want to appoint their own friends and political trusties to these bodies, and did just that, getting rid of the pretence that these are independent appointments, or reverted to impartial, open and fair recruitment, properly regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that the vacancies for non-executive board members are advertised on the Government’s public appointments website. Appointees are subject to a shortlisting panel interview, with the appropriate mediators and the appropriate composition.

Spyware

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, again, I cannot comment on intelligence and operational specifics. I am obviously aware of the issues raised in the reports, which in the first instance are all with the company and Israeli authorities. But we have raised our concerns several times with the Government of Israel about NSO’s operations.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, what assurance can the Minister give us that no journalist, politician or campaigner in the UK has been affected by this software? Would the Government contact anyone who was so targeted? What UK diplomatic channels are being used to ask questions of the countries identified by these leaks?

[Lord True (Con) [V]]

My Lords, again, I cannot comment on individuals, but I underline what I have said about this Government’s deploring of any effort to target UK individuals, the representations that we have made and the commoditisation of this kind of spyware. Unfortunately, the commercial cyber capability industry is global. We are seeking in many ways to try to secure better control and have legal, proportionate and proper use of any such devices, and better control of exports.